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From: mt view <>
Subject: Vineyard's Irish roots, in Livermore
Date: Fri, 17 Mar 2006 13:00:49 -0800 (PST)

From today's Contra Costa Times (March 17, 2006)







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Posted on Fri, Mar. 17, 2006

Vineyard's Irish roots

By Bonita Brewer
CONTRA COSTA TIMES

If James Concannon was alive today -- St. Patrick's Day -- he might well sit across from you, pop open a bottle of wine he personally made and say, in his best Irish brogue, "Boy, do I have some stories to tell!"
Those stories are so colorful, in fact, that a documentary film crew from Ireland is in Livermore this week to chronicle the life of Concannon, who came to the United States in 1865, worked as a hotel bellboy and went on to become an influential businessman and the country's first Irish immigrant winemaker.
"His life even before he started the vineyard was fascinating," said Neal Boyle of Esras Film Ltd., an Irish production company commissioned by a television station there to do the documentary in Ireland's native Gaelic language.
"You can't get more Irish," Boyle said of Concannon, who is from the Aran Islands off the country's western coast and who -- as Irish luck would have it -- was born on St. Patrick's Day in 1847. "When he left home, he didn't even speak English."
The half-hour documentary, which also brought the filmmakers to San Francisco and Mexico this week in tracing Concannon's adventures, will be broadcast some time in late summer on Ireland's only Gaelic-language television station. The program will have English subtitles.
"The aim is to show the spirit of the Irish people at that time, who left home during that time, and their pioneering spirits," Boyle said Thursday from the still-thriving Livermore winery, where Concannon's grandson Jim still works at age 74. "This vineyard is his living legacy, and what is left."
Narrating the tale is Concannon's great-great-grandniece, Deirdre Ní Chonghaile, a 26-year-old musician who still lives on the Aran Islands.
From what she can gather so far, James Concannon "was an entrepreneur who liked the chase -- the hunt -- more than the money itself," she said.
Jim Concannon said that though his grandfather was poor, "I don't think poverty is what drove him (from Ireland) as much as his adventurous spirit did."
On Thursday Deirdre Ní Chonghaile interviewed Jim Concannon. Like his father, Jim grew up in what was a family-owned and family-run business until it was sold in 1980. The winery has changed hands a couple of times since then. Though it is now owned by the Wine Group LLC, Concannon still touts its Irish-American roots. Local historian Gary Drummond was also interviewed for the piece.
James Concannon was just a lad at 18 when he boarded a ship from Liverpool, England, to Boston with a cousin, their passage paid by an uncle. Resourceful, he got a job as a hotel bellhop in Augusta, Maine, working his way up to manager over the next few years. He later came west with his Irish-born bride Ellen to run a sheep ranch in Oregon.
After that, it was on to San Francisco. The couple lived in the Mission District, where James Concannon sold books for the Anton Roman publishing house. He then got a highly successful West Coast franchise, running from Canada to Mexico, with the Sheplar rubber stamp company.
Concannon made friends with people in high places, including the Rev. Joseph Sadoc Alemany, San Francisco's first archbishop. His connections with then-Mexican President Porfirio Diaz landed him a street-cleaning franchise in Mexico City that he eventually sold to a French firm.
Hearing that Livermore resembled France's Rhône Valley, James Concannon came to Livermore and started a 40-acre vineyard. He made his first wine in 1883 at the family home, where the Concannons raised 10 children. A year later, James built the winery that still stands today. He later sent more than 1 million grape cuttings to Mexican haciendas to help spawn a Mexican wine industry.
The documentary filming in Livermore wraps up today, when a family dinner -- with Irish dance and fiddle music -- is held in honor of James Concannon's birthday. Also today, construction gets under way on a new barrel room and bottling facility that Jim Concannon said will vastly improve efficiency.
The dinner will include corned beef, herbed mashed potatoes and, instead of foaming green beer to celebrate St. Patrick's Day, Concannon sauvignon blanc and petit sirah.
James Concannon died in 1911, before grandson Jim was born. But his legacy lives on at Concannon Vineyard, where 100,000 cases are produced annually. Though his name is not a household word in Ireland, and though the Irish are not known as big wine drinkers, 15 retailers in Ireland carry Concannon wine. The late President Ronald Reagan, touting his own Irish heritage during his 1984 re-election bid, brought a special bottle of Concannon petite sirah on a state trip to Ireland.
The Concannon name goes back more than 1,000 years in Ireland, where Jim Concannon attended a family gathering about 25 years ago. He said a cousin still lives in the home where his grandfather was born in the Aran Islands in Galway Bay.
It's an ongoing story that would make St. Patrick proud.

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Bonita Brewer covers the city of Livermore. Reach her at or 925-847-2120.



George


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